As TTAC readers well know: There is a huge E85 flex-fuel loophole in the new federal fuel economy CAFE standards. Ford will drive right through that barn door-sized hole.

By the end of this year, Ford wants to deliver 370,000 flex fuel vehicles, a number which they can trade against fuel oinkers. Let’s review: A flex-fuel vehicle is one that is capable of running on E-85. But it doesn’t have to. It can also run on straight gas. Or on any mixture of the two fuels. As long as it’s E85 capable, it counts at least for a Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha at the DC CAFE.

At the 2010 BIO International Convention in Chicago, Sue Cischke, Ford’s group vice president, Sustainability, Environment and Safety Engineering said that “Ethanol and other biofuels help reduce the county’s dependence on imported oil.”

She even had stats to prove it: More ethanol is now produced and used in the U.S. than the amount of gasoline made from oil imported to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia and Iraq combined. Now there’s food for thought …

Ford is ready to expand flexible-fuel vehicle output to 50 percent of total 2012 model year vehicle production. Under one condition, says Ford:

“Assuming incentives continue to encourage the manufacturing, distribution and availability of renewable fuels as well as the production of flexible fuel vehicles.”

I don’t have a concrete reference but I read someplace that you basically rate it on the gasoline consumption alone and ignore the ethanol consumption. So you divide your 20 mpg by 0.15 and get 133 mpg. Great, huh?

Meanwhile, the New York Times is reporting that the EPA is ready to issue the rule “permitting” 15% ethanol blends at the pump, but the car manufacturers claim that detailed testing has shown that half the engines have problems with their exhaust systems or otherwise with the higher blend. The ethanol industry says that they’re exaggerating.

The reason why they’re raising the ethanol percentage is that the law mandates a certain number of gallons of ethanol be used, a number that is mathematically impossible to achieve with E10 alone at current consumption. (Presumably the number was set assuming that consumption rates would continue to rise, whereas instead they’ve fallen and stagnated over the last 4-5 years.)

“E85 is such a joke. In my Silverado…my mileage (straight city driving) went from 15.1MPG to 11MPG on E85.”

What were you expecting? Ethanol has 66% the heat of combustion of gasoline on a volume basis, so if you buy E85 you are giving up 0.85 x 0.34 = 29% of your fuel energy. 15.1 MPG x (1-0.29) = 10.7 MPG. So, you actually did a little better than expected, perhaps because ethanol also oxygenates the fuel a bit, maybe increasing the combustion efficiency of the gasoline fration.

To be a fair deal for the consumer, E85 should cost about 70% of the price for straight gas. How much were you paying?

>>>She even had stats to prove it: More ethanol is now produced and used in the U.S. than the amount of gasoline made from oil imported to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia and Iraq combined. Now there’s food for thought …

The big question: how much oil went into the production of that ethanol? In the US, agriculture causes more greenhouse gas emissions than automobiles.

“The big question: how much oil went into the production of that ethanol? In the US, agriculture causes more greenhouse gas emissions than automobiles.”

Oh, oh, pick me pick me, I know!

Very very little *oil* went into producing the ethanol. On a lifecycle analysis, only about 1/3 of the energy used to make corn ethanol is associated with any aspect of crop production, and of that, only a small fraction is from petroleum (gas, diesel) – much of it is in the form of natural gas used to make nitrogen fertilizers, etc.

Most (2/3) of the energy used to make ethanol is consumed by the ethanol plant itself, and almost all of that is natural gas or coal, not petroleum.

So, even though the total “energy balance” of ethanol is not great (about 1.4 BTU out per BTU in), the “petroleum replacement value” is awesome – about 7 BTU worth of gasoline replacement for every BTU of petroleum put in.

So, ethanol is really about converting abundant, domestic sources of energy (coal, natural gas) into a replacement for a more scarce, largely imported source of energy (oil). It is really not that fundamentally different from the process of converting coal (abundant but useless to most people) into electricity. A major difference though is that ethanol also offers a (modestly) positive energy balance because of the capture of solar energy by the crop. In the coal-to-electricity conversion you lose about 2/3 of the energy you started with.

Mr. Schmitt:
+1 for not taking the obligatory (and ill-informed) cheap shots at ethanol that this site has jumped on in the past.
-1 for showing a pic of a SWEET corn (or possibly seed corn) harvest with the post, they’re not gonna be making much E85 out of that.